She's Gonna Sell My Monkey

I think that's what the man sang. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Jazz Fest was in full swing on Saturday. My wife, friends and I packed water, sunscreen, cameras and fancy foldable camp chairs and drove to the race track where the Fest took place. The Fest consists of several tents and stages, each of which spotlights a particular musical style. There was a jazz tent (naturally), a gospel tent, a blues tent and so forth. The Fest celebrated 10 years of South African freedom, so South African musicians were featured prominently across the Fest.

And the food...the food...

Jambalaya, etoufee, ribs, bread pudding, mago freezes. Food stands dotted the landscape and, at cheap prices in small servings, one could knosh all day. I can assure you that it was a rare moment when we didn't have a beer or food in our hands. It was all amazing.

We arranged to meet my brother-in-law at a prominent flagpole and got our bearings. He was decked out in a loud shirt, beads, straw hat and a koozie hanging from a cord around his neck. He is a veteran of many Fests and he was ready for whatever came. He told us of a watermelon sacrifice that was to take place later that day and he illustrated the dances and sang the songs. As he waved his hands in the air and chanted in a low voice, I realized that I was through the looking glass and in a strange land.

After the meeting and presentation, we set out to try the music. We caught Victor Gorin at the jazz tent, the Johnson Extension and a South African gospel group from Ladysmith in the gospel tent. Although the rain relented, the air was still quite humid and warm, so we took a break in the air-conditioned grandstand. The Fest features interviews with many of the musicians and other noteworthy persons and we caught the tail-end of Hugh Mesekela's (trumpet player from South Africa, best known for the tune "Grazin' in the Grass") interview. We sat in the cool shade for awhile before joining the fray again.

The crowd swelled in our absence. We later learned that approximately 87,000 people attended that day's Fest. We joined the constant flow that swirled around the track (winding through the inevitable eddies of people who stop in mid-stride to talk or gawk) and made our way to one of the Fest's larger stages to listen to the Funky Meters (a band that boasts one of the many members of the Neville clan). We didn't hear much. The crowd at the stage was so great that it spilled into other spaces. We were late and we contented ourselves to sitting in a muddy field, elbow to elbow with thousands of other people, and eating macaroni-and-cheese with crawfish. The Funky Meters were a faint warble in the distance.

This lasted about as long as the macaroni-and-cheese. Disgusted with our lot, we wandered the Fest again in search of something different. We ended up at a tiny stage in the lee side of the gradnstand where an Italian tambourine virtouoso rattled and pounded and sang and danced. As we settled down, we chanced to look up and see my brother-in-law looking down upon us from on high. It seems that the Kentucky Derby began at the same time as our obscure percussionist and he put a wager or two on its outcome. There were large glass windows on the back of the grandstand and from there people could look down on the track or the stage. I must admit that I don't know if he won anything or not. He seemed excited but that could have simply been his general state of Fest-ivitis.

We wrapped up our day at the Fais-Da-Do stage, which featured cajun and zydeco music. This was the highlight of the day, without a doubt. Duane Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers played. Imagine Michael Clarke Duncan with an accordian. Then imagine that he is backed up by Harry Knowles on bass and Sonny Chiba on lead guitar, with some spastic skinny white boy on washboard. Then imagine them playing hard, fast and well. The energy level was amazing. People danced and swayed. Women threw their underwear. Men threw their caps. They began with a song that sounded like "She's Gonna Sell My Monkey" and didn't let up for 45 minutes. Mr. Dopsie (the Michael Clarke Duncan lookalike) jumped into the crowd, his fingers blurring across the accordian keys.

Then it abruptly ended. This was not totally unexpected: black crowds rolled in, bringing with it a sudden temperature. Everyone expected the rain to begin again and the crowd kept its collective eye on the weather and held its breath. The rain did not come and the crowd, in its relief, fell into the music with a will. But it ended anyway, cut short by management who did not want to chance live music in a lightning storm.

We went home happy.